


The One With The Cake

by WhoreOfPromethea



Series: A Clone And An Irwin Walk Into A Bar [1]
Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, this is literally just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 12:30:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoreOfPromethea/pseuds/WhoreOfPromethea
Summary: In which Georgia II discovers that she still has a sweet tooth. Post canon.





	The One With The Cake

It was reliably well known that I - both the original me and this one - had a Coca Cola addiction. People often assumed then that I had a sweet tooth across the board. Honestly, it depended on the food in question. 

Shaun, who could be depended on to take his caffeine in the form of hot, bitter coffee, was more likely to be scarfing sugary food than me. 

The compromise was chocolate cake, and apparently it still was. 

When I looked in the mirror, I was more blonde than brunette, and my eyes still creeped me out on account of how non fucked up they were, but at least internally some things hadn’t changed. 

Shaun’s return from the grocery store signalled the arrival of several things: first, an end to my worrying. It was easier if he got the groceries alone. I didn’t like being outside where I could possibly be identified any longer than I strictly had to. Grocery shopping wasn’t counted as a necessity. Saying that, I also didn’t like being apart from Shaun for longer than necessary, either. 

On a lighter note, it meant fresh food, a new supply of coke, and whatever the hell else Shaun decided to spend our money on. I couldn’t hugely comment though; most of “our” money came from Maggie, funnelled to us within the sketchiest legal means. I was pretty sure as long as we were spending it, they knew we were alive, and thus wouldn’t be too pissed about it. 

I would have been happy with a six pack of coke. Shaun had brought an entire box, one of those packs that have twenty or so cans at a lower price. That wasn’t all: he had also bought me three newspapers - the good ones, ones that were still reliable, considering our internet use was spotty at best. We had to stay on blackout frequently, in case we were somehow still being traced. 

As well as the newspapers, coke, and my favourite soy ‘bacon’, there was cake. I didn’t think I’d had cake since... well, probably since the last birthday the original Georgia had had. Almost two years, then. Another strange thought. 

The cake in question was chocolate sponge, a layer of cream in the middle, dark chocolate frosting on the outside. A perfect blend of bitter and sweet, and the only sweet food choice Shaun and I wouldn’t argue over. 

I hadn’t expected cake. It was too much of a treat food, and we were strictly eating only what we needed. Not necessarily what was healthy, but enough calories to keep ourselves alive and energised enough. Coke and coffee counted towards that. 

“Figured we could use a break.” 

I wasn’t quite sure how sweets equaled a break, but I would take his word for it. Maybe the treat meant that we could relax, just for a few moments. I appreciated the gesture, even if I was pretty sure there was no meaning behind it except Shaun wanting cake. 

He was still behaving like every meal might be our last, probably still half expecting me to disappear and go back to just being a voice in his head. Lucky for him, I wasn’t planning on being so rude. 

I was ninety-seven percent Georgia Mason. That was good enough for both of us, and if he noticed any little differences, he didn’t comment on them. 

I was a bit less frugal with affection now, for instance. Whereas she would have avoided physical contact with anyone, I was always tempted by it. My instinct was to hug, not recoil. At first, I’d tried to push those instincts away, until I finally got it through my thick clone skull that maybe it was alright to have three percent difference. It wasn’t like Shaun minded. 

I was still her, down to the ninety seventh percentile, and really, the differences didn’t seem to matter, but they were enough to distinguish me as someone Other, someone of my own as well as a girl with a dead reporter’s memories. 

No retinal KA. A little more huggy. I had never been emotionally fragile, or the original hadn’t, but I had the tendency to lean toward it. I had panic attacks in white rooms. I couldn’t wear white clothes. They were small changes, but they were mine. 

Anyway. Change in cake preference was not one of the differences. That became apparent when I devoured a quarter of the damn thing on my own. 

“Good cake?” Shaun still had his mouth full as he spoke. It was gross, but also a habit I would never get tired of seeing. 

“It was, actually.” I briefly tried to remember if the bakery in town was any good. It must have been, if he had procured the cake from there. 

“Good.” He toyed with his fork, “I wasn’t sure if it was something you would still like.”

Little had changed in my dietary preferences, but I struggled to eat meat anymore, knowing that most poultry was cloned in sterile circumstances for human consumption. It felt a bit too close to home for me. That was fine, though: Canada offered a wide variety of soy and tofu based foods, and I had yet to try even a tenth of them. 

There wouldn’t have been any conceivable reason why I wouldn’t have liked cake anymore, but it was sweet of him to make sure. 

“Nope,” I told him cheerfully, “cake is still very much a desired food.”

I struggled with bread and cheese: it was too much of a reminder of my time in the CDC, but I was getting better.

I was acutely aware that Shaun would have probably liked to have been outside, searching for zombie moose to wrestle and poke with sticks. I was also aware of the fact that he wasn’t, because he preferred to stay with me. Sometimes I felt bad about being the reason he had become a hermit, but at the same time I didn’t think he minded all that much. 

We weren’t the same people who had signed up for the Ryman campaign, but somehow, I thought, we would be okay.


End file.
